The Daily Show Scoops On The Record On Florida Voter Roll Purge

Greta Van Susteren was no lapdog during her interview with Florida Governor Rick Scott last night. She asked some hard-hitting, penetrating questions about his purging of voters from the Florida voter rolls. Interestingly, Scott could not provide a good explanation as to how he knew the people he had purged were not citizens if he didn’t have the roster of citizens he was suing the Department of Homeland Security to get. Even more interestingly, Van Susteren suddenly ran out of time before she was able to complete her tough questioning. But she never got to the points The Daily Show made perfectly clear: that the voter fraud Scott is fear mongering about is a non-existent problem and he's putting unreasonably onerous restrictions on registration.

To be fair, Van Susteren made her own excellent points. She asked if, lacking names from the federal government, Scott had shifted the burden to people suspected of not being citizens to prove otherwise.

And Scott weaseled in his answers. "What we did is, we took that small sample... and that's why we've had to sue Homeland Security for this database... and now we're trying to work with Homeland Security to get the right database... and use that to do it the right way."

So Van Susteren pressed, asking if he had any information that, when he sent letters, the people involved were not citizens.

Again, Scott weaseled. "What we said was you need to come forward and show us that you're a U.S. citizen." In other words, yes, the burden of proof had shifted.

"But why them to begin with?" Van Susteren asked.

Scott said, "because of the data that we had." When Van Susteren asked what data he had, Scott said he used information from the Motor Vehicle Bureau.

Van Susteren noted that there was nothing on her license to indicate citizenship but, she gave him a pass, adding, "so maybe there was something different than I had filled out."

And then, in the middle of her next question, about the federal government suing Scott, she abruptly ended the interview, saying, "Another day, we'll be able to talk about that one." It suggested that the producers were abruptly terminating an interview she thought would run longer.

So a comedy show managed to impart more information and offer a more critical look at a controversial voting issue than the country's top-rated "news" network, the one that boasts about being "fair and balanced" and "we report, you decide."